Comments:
I started this video around January/Febuary of 2003. I just started ripping the game CDs for the footage. When I heard the song I knew that I could make the video work. After I had begun editing, one of my computer components went bad. I got it fixed and my computer tuned from all of the virii it had on it. I was basically out of commission for two months. I started re-editing the video in late May. This was the first video that I used a video journal for. I mean, I kept a daily track of what I did on the video written down. First let get go through some other things that I did. I know that Evanescence is now such an overused band and the song is done to death, but when I started this video the song was never used or anything. I've seen some of the other Bring Me To Life videos, and I honestly think that my video is better than them. You can judge it for yourself though.

Video Journal (from editing period to distribution file):
Day 1
I've actually decided to redo the video from it's original thing. I know that the song is really overdone now and everything. There's 65 videos now that just use this song, but I think that my video will still be much better than the rest. Anyway, I've just started work on the new trailer for the video. It's going to use 9 images set to the song Imaginary from Evanescence. Here's what the images actually say: 1. Existentialism Studios Presents 2. A Marquise Strife Production 3. Starring 4. Evanescence 5. Sorceress Edea 6. Kuja 7. And Sephiroth 8. In 9. The Nothing I've Become. It takes about the first 17 seconds or so from the beginning of the song. It should turn out pretty good. My original plan was to have the visualization of the song in the background, but I'm not able to video capture it on this computer, so I'm just using a bunch of motion settings on them. Wow, I'm getting so much better at making music videos now. I'm having a blast too. This one will be my best one yet.

Day 2
I finished the video trailer today. I had to make a few changes to the original plan, but I guess that's the fun of video editing huh? Sensei helped me out with ideas a little, so I gotta give her some credit. I moved the "And Sephiroth" image back to number 8 and got rid of the "In". I replaced the number 7 image with a new image for Seifer Almasy. That in was just really retarded. The trailer looks really good in my opinion; it's awesome. Now time to edit the video!

Day 3
Okay, I started editing the video today. It basically uses the same video from before, except a little bit more spicy. I trying to create the effect of a piano for the opening. Right now I got it to brighten up like an inverted piano, but the rest of the scene brightens up too. Just a minor set back. I think I can fix it with a green screen and changing the Clip effect filling to gray instead of white. That might do it. I'll try it with white first then try gray. White suits a piano more. It's going slow, but it's started.

Day 4
I got that effect (the piano thingy) to work finally. I had to use a combination of the effects Clip, Invert, and Transparency --> Screen. It's very cool and everything seems to be fine with the video now. I'm going to use the "piano effect" until the first MAJOR beats come into the song. It'll be around another 20 seconds of footage then. I can definitely feel that I'm becoming a hell of a lot better AMV creator. It's a lot more fun now. Now it's time for my exciting editing sequence combined with the "piano effect." This is going to be a great Pokemon battle! I mean AMV!

Day 5
Well, started on the next part of the video. This is basically when the words start to the song. It's pretty cool. I'm keeping the piano effect until the major beats. To even get the piano effect timed right now, I've downed my timeline to 1 frame, but I still do my main editing in 2 seconds. It's hard switching back and forth, but it's alright. It's going slower now, but I'm getting the hang of it again.

Day 6
Okay, well, work is slowly coming along on this video. I should be able to delve into it sometime next week, hopefully finishing it within 2 weeks. I just messed around with the piano effect for about the first 25 seconds of the actual video. Some of the timing seems off, so it may take some time to correct it all. Seems on track for now though.

Day 7
I deleted the last 10 seconds of the piano effect. It was just like the way that it was in the first version of the video. I think that I might still use the same clips from that beta version, maybe with a little better editing to make it seem "faster." I'm going to straight edit the next couple days and then go back and fill in the effects. Time to bear down on this video and crank out a masterpeice.

Day 8
I did a lot today, since it was my day off from work and no work on the website. I've basically added clips for the video up until the first chorus. The way the video leads into the chorus is very interesting. It ends on the word "home" fading away, so I shoed a clip of the Lunar Fall from FF8 with the Earth in the background. On the first beat of the chorus (it's a major beat), the big bubble bursts open letting all of the monsters inside out to the earth. Tomorrow will be a lot of work on the chorus. It's going slow (fast if it's straight editing), but it should be done by the end of the month.

Day 9
I've finally got through the first chorus. The first time I tried to fit clips in, it didn't look right to me, because I'm not used to editing such short clips. I figured out that the clips didn't exactly fit the song as I wanted, so I had to go back and change a couple of the clips. I think I did a pretty good job so far, now if I can just get through the rest 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I should be done sometime this week if I can get enough time to edit.

Day 10
I started to work on the next part of the video. I wanted Sephiroth to be at the beginning of the next lyrics since it fits it perfectly. I actually followed the song with the beats popping up and down. I originally made Seifer and Edea pop up, because the lyrics fit them too, but then I thought that it would be a cool transition if I could get the scene to change with those popping beats. Sephiroth's part ended with a small clip of Jenova, so they are linked forever.

Day 11
I went on further up to the second chorus. I showed Sephiroth's shield being destroyed as it "leaves him behind." I also showed Brahne summoning Odin to life. I purposely ended right before the chorus with a scene of the Black Mages because they really came to life in the game. I then did that flashy transition scene again to get to Bahamut rising out of the water from FF9. Oh, yeah, I did change Day 10's little flashy thing to a transition between the FF9 scene in the chorus to Sephiroth rising.

Day 12
I started on the second chorus today. There's not much to this except for straight editing. I really did want to do the first "SAVE ME" on Brahne's face right before she's oblitterated by Bahamut. I ended this chorus with Edea slicing down Squall from FF8 at the end of Disc 1. Oh, yeah and the final clip of it, because the end of this chorus is much louder than the last, is Edea raising her arms and having her dress shoot up.

Day 13
I went back and changed a couple clips of Edea right at the end of the second chorus. Since it now starts out with "Bring Me To Life", I just put a couple scenes of those flying beasts from the end of FF9. I also tried to match the lyrics by adding Seifer and Weapon from FF7 after the beasts. It had the "Bring Me To Life" again, so I put Bahamut destroying Alexandria at those points.

Day 14
I went back to fix some timing problems at the end of the second chorus. It looks a lot smoother now at that point. I still need to go back and fix some of the problems with the "piano effect." I may have to look at how Fluxmeister did that effect in his video to make mine more correct, because right now I can see that the effect changes the original video. I also may try to extend it to the first "hard" beat in the song, so it'll go until the Black Mage scene (the one that talks correctly in FF9). After I finish the base of the video, I'll go back and fix a bunch of mistakes while trying to spiff the video up more. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I think it will make the impact much more heavy on the audience. I also changed that Seifer scene after the second chorus, because this one looks a lot better in hte context of the video. It's still Seifer, but he looks much more handsome. After the Bahamut scenes, I tried to follow the music to make a transition to Adel. It didn't quite work out the way I wanted, so I'll have to go back and tune it up a little. I tried to put Adel in that "frozen" state like in the song. That's basically the scene that started this entire video idea in the first place. Oh, I was considering to change the title to "The Nothing Evil Became." I'm not really sure which one sounds better. I think I will probably keep it the same. I showed the clip of Cloud handing Sephiroth the Black Materia so it looks like he's "touching" him. I fit in a scene of Sephiroth with the song going "daaaaarling," but I think that I will change, because I want it to have a more serious impact. I only have 1 minute and 30 seconds before the video is complete! Of course I still have to go back and fix all of the errors. Oh, yeah, I should really redo the audio in the AMV, so that it can be louder and more effective. I'll need to follow AbsoluteDestiny's guide on it.

Day 15
Since I haven't updated this for a while, it may become jargled with some other days of work, but here goes. I went back and fixed the transition from Bahamut to Adel, and instead of having Sephiroth for that "darling" I put another scene of Seifer. He's more closely related and in love with Adel, so it's only right to have him on that work. After Seifer I tried to fit in the scene of the Black Mage destroying all of the good Black Mages (pointy hats). And to end on the "deeeeeeeeead" part of the song, I wanted to show Sephiroth landing right on top of Aeris. Beautiful scene, I've wanted to do that part for weeks. I'm pretty sure that that's all that I did for that day.

Day 16
Now, I tried to match the lyrics for the song directly. I started off with the clip of the eye opening and firing (changed around later), then Edea in the dark, Seifer in the parade, and Adel capturing Rinoa. I think this is combining two days, but oh, well. Now came the part of the "Without thought, without voice, without soul, Don't let me die in here, There must be something more". Here's the order of the scenes which were perfectly timed out: Seifer pushing Rinoa, Ultima Weapon, Pointy Hats, Clock striking 20 and Edea being shot at, and Rufus getting blown up. Then came a "Bring, Me, To, Liiiiiiife" part before the final chorus. Again, order: Brahne, Edea, Kuja, and Sephiroth. I skiped the first beat of the chorus to extend out the Liiiiife.

Day 17
To start off the chorus, I put down some random scenes that just fit the music more than the lyrics. "SAVE ME" was taken to the footage of the big fireball from the start of FF9. The dark scene after that is Ultimecia's castle from FF8. Then I went through Bahamut's battles to have him blow up on the second "SAVE ME". At the end of the chorus I had a clip of Sephiroth destroyed. I've been planning that clip forever.

Day 18
Today I remembered that I haven't used much footage from Meteor! I totally forgot about that, so the clips after Sephiroth are basically Meteor to "Bring Me To Life". Since the lyrics went "I've been living a lie" after that, I put Seifer there since I've been putting him there before. He really fits those lyrics, because he was living a dream throughout the game. He slices Squall in those scenes, but I don't think I showed Squall's face. Since I was running out of clips I put a scene of Alexandria getting destroyed in FF9. I put the final "Bring Me To Life" down ad Edea getting her haircut, Kuja's first appearance, some random Seifer clip, and Sephiroth after killing Aeris.

Day 19
I went back and change some of the clips for the final "Bring Me To Life". Instead of Edea getting a haircut, I inserted the clip of her as the parade is happening and I changed the Seifer scene to one of Bahamut stretching. I ended the music video with clips of Kuja walking away (first appearance again) and Sephiroth walking back into the fire.

Day 20
I decided to go through the video and correcting all of the mistakes that were made today. I changed the font for the video bumper. It's now President instead of Arial. And I decided to extend the piano effect to the Black Mage. What I did was take the timing between the ones that I had done already and reproduce them in a cycle. It was dead on and worked like a charm. Here's the time code for it. I changed some of the ways that I did it. This time I used Flux's method (Luminance). I was basically doing the same thing, but this way is much simpler. They're all just white blank images instead of the full video now. I then put the same effect at the end of the video. Doing that was much harder, because I wasn't able to find where the first beat was supposed to be. So instead I found the last beat, and worked backwards. Here's the time codes that I used for the entire effect. Finally I changed the title of the video to "Evil". In the video it's EviL, but for other references it is just Evil.

Day 21
I fixed all the small errors today. Just transitions, some scene changes, small stuff. I can't remember what they were now, so I can't say what I did exactly. I re-ripped the songs from the Evanescence: Fallen CD. I had to re-add the effects to it. It was kind of weird, because the rip from the Fallen CD is 1 second longer than the rip from the Daredevil Soundtrack.

Day 22
I export the file from Premiere. It was 370MB, which surprised me greatly. I thought it would be over 1GB.

Day 23
It took me a lot of time and effort, but I finally got the final distribution version of the video. It took me around 8 tries to get it down to a 65MB MPEG1 file. The audio would be blarring if I had my way, but to conserve space I made it a little lower. The convention version will be a fairly large file. I'm pretty proud of my video and no one can change my mind otherwise.

This was the first video that I had fun in the creation of. Usually it's more stressful than fun, but it was really different for this video. It's about all the FF bad guys. The original title was The Nothing I've Become, but changed to Evil since it's all about Evil and their failures. I hope you guys enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it. If you happen to like, please leave an opinion.